


Dance to the Rhythm

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Day 5: Eros, Gen, Pole Dancing, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-05 10:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: The pole dancing had been… Yuuri’s idea. Pichit was the one who egged Yuuri on but It was Yuuri’s idea. Pichit who had just arrived to the US to train under Celestino and was looking for core strengthening exercises. Yuuri had absently mentioned that Minako had told him that pole dancing was great for your core and before he knew it, the two of them were signing up for pole dancing classes.That wasn’t the problem.Or the one where Yuuri learns how to pole dance and is too competitive for his own good.





	Dance to the Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 5 of Yuuriweek: Eros

If anyone asks Yuuri, he’ll blame Pichit because all of it is absolutely Pichit’s fault.

Pichit gladly takes the blame because he is proud of it. He considers it to be one of the greatest achievements of his life. Because he is a horrible person and is proud of causing Yuuri complete misery. Pichit is the worst best friend ever. Pichit  is the type of friend who will let Yuuri make horrible life choices with endless encouragement and documentation through Instagram.

(Truth be told, Yuuri has no one to blame but himself.)

Pichit keeps Yuuri in an arm lock the entire way there, happily chattering all the way. If he wasn’t Yuuri’s best friend, he’d be very, very terrified of the man.

“Do I have to do this?” Yuuri doesn’t whine. He doesn’t. He has more dignity than that.

(He really doesn’t. This entire fiasco is proof that he has absolutely no dignity.)

“You’re the one who signed up for it,” Pichit points out and yeah, it was him. Yuuri’s not _denying_ that, he’s just pointedly ignoring it. “And I have very reliable information that you stayed up past three in the morning on the roof of our building to make sure you got that sign-up video just right.”

Yuuri’s head snaps up. That he is denying. He is denying that until his very last breath. “How did you--”

“It’s cute how you think you can hide anything from me, sweetie,” Pichit says. “Also we’re roommates and you are not subtle.”

“I was drunk,” Yuuri mutters. He wasn’t. He really wasn’t. He really wishes he was.

“Sure you were.” Pichit winks. Yuuri groans and buries his face in his hand. This is Yuuri’s official worst idea ever.

“Hey,” Pichit says softly to his ear. “You don’t have to actually do this. It’s not the Grand Prix or Worlds or anything. You can back out of this.”

Pichit has this really weird way of motivating Yuuri’s competitive side by giving him an out when he wants one; it has a 100% success rate. Yuuri hates backing out of anything he knows he can do. Pichit discovered this quirk within a week of them knowing each other and uses his knowledge for evil purposes. Yuuri feels personally betrayed.

“I know,” Yuuri says. “But I’m not going to.”

“And why’s that?” Yuuri can hear the Smirk. He has come to resent the Smirk. It is a sign of a battle lost and Yuuri really _hates_ losing.

The true, absolute no holds back answer: because Yuuri is sometimes a tad too over competitive over the things he takes seriously, and he takes his dancing very, very _seriously._

The short answer: “Tyler is an asshole and definitely not the best pole dancer in the Midwest.”

Pichit whoops and punches the air, nearly hitting Yuuri in the face. Yuuri tries to put his competition face on and not look like he’s about to throw up. Granted, he looks like he’s about to throw up in most of his competitions, but that’s just besides the point.

“I think this is the first time I’ve heard you say an almost good thing about yourself!” he says, pressing a kiss to Yuuri’s cheek. “I’m so proud of you!”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Yuuri mutters.

“It really is,” Pichit says. “And you are so taking Tyler down today.”

Yes. Yes he is. Yuuri will not rest until he’s done so. It turns out that he is very touchy about his pole dancing.

He doesn’t say any of this. Mostly because he’s focusing on _not_ throwing up.

\--

Tyler is, without a doubt, a horrible, horrible person. The type of horrible person that people should just avoid from the get go, and probably lock in a basement somewhere for that person’s own safety and the sanity of everyone around him. He was also Yuuri’s roommate in his second year of training in Detroit.

(He is not going to curse the fact that he has horrible, horrible luck when it comes to roommates. He’s not. It seems horribly ungrateful and childish when he’s actually training in the US with a great coach and is maybe not losing to his nerves at every single competition.

The first one… Yuuri doesn’t talk about the first one. He is trying to forget the first Roommate ever existed.

But yeah, he really has horrible luck when it comes to roommates. Pichit is a literal godsend that still has Yuuri reeling from disbelief because he is _never_ that lucky.)

Tyler is a figure skater, too; third in the last US Nationals, if Yuuri remembers correctly. He’s two years older than Yuuri. They’d never really competed against each other except for maybe one or two times in Juniors Worlds. He hadn’t really stuck out in Yuuri’s memory and apparently, the sentiment was shared. He had taken one look at Yuuri  the moment he turned up, with his wavy blond hair and wide blue eyes, mispronounced his name three times in the space of ten minutes, and had gotten way into Yuuri’s first meeting. It was not the best first meeting.

Tyler’s also developed the habit of following Yuuri around the rink and pointing out every wrong thing about his clothes and his body. And then there are times when he just outright tempts Yuuri to break his diet by bringing Katsudon to the rink and asking Yuuri if he wanted some, as if mocking him. Yuuri does his best to ignore him and tune him out. It’s a relief when Pichit arrives and Yuuri ends up rooming with him.

Tyler still follows him around and does weird things like offering him Katsudon when he obviously did not win, just to mock Yuuri. Still, Yuuri lets it go because Americans are a weird bunch and Yuuri’s about as non-confrontational as it gets.

And then… And then the pole dancing happened.

The pole dancing had been… Yuuri’s idea. Pichit was the one who egged Yuuri on but It was Yuuri’s idea. Pichit who had just arrived to the US to train under Celestino and was looking for core strengthening exercises. Yuuri had absently mentioned that Minako had told him that pole dancing was great for your core and before he knew it, the two of them were signing up for pole dancing classes.

That wasn’t the problem.

It was fine. It was actually really, really good. Yuuri likes dancing and hey, he’d sworn Pichit to never post a single picture of their classes online on pain of death, and Pichit had agreed, albeit reluctantly. It was nice. He liked all types of dancing. Yuuri needed to work on his core strength as well, at any rate.

Except Tyler had overheard Pichit talking about it in the rink and decided to invite himself along.

That wasn’t the problem, either. Yuuri didn’t particularly _like_ Tyler but he’s… Well, Yuuri is a very non-confrontational person.

The problem is that Tyler is… Tyler is not.

Tyler is about as confrontational as it gets.

It happens like this:

Yuuri is good at dancing. It’s one of the few good things he has going for him; he knows that sixteen years under Minako’s crazy dance program she’d specialized for him has given him an innate grace and a talent of picking up dances quickly. His dance education had been eclectic, at best, ranging from traditional ballet, to modern, to jazz, to tango, to hip-hop, even a little bit of disco. Minako was a great believer in a well-rounded education.

Because of this, Yuuri picks up pole dancing very quickly. His body has gotten very versatile over the years. The three of them are taking an Intermediate class but the teacher seems weirdly fond of Yuuri and is really into teaching him the more complex positions. Yuuri wonders if she just secretly wants him to fail; she seems amused by his skill, more than anything. Yuuri doesn’t really question it that much, for the sake of his sanity and all that.

Tyler was not happy about this. He is apparently a very competitive person, too. Yuuri should have expected that; figure skaters in general are very competitive people.

Whenever Yuuri catches his face, Tyler is glaring at him, staring hard, no doubt noting every single misstep Yuuri makes.

Yuuri nearly protested that he’s not even that good and the teacher probably just wants to have a good laugh when she teaches Yuuri moves that are way above his skill-level, but then, Tyler just had to...

“He’s not even that good,” Tyler continually grouches to the class at large. “Maybe you should make him do it again. He’s too stiff. He could use the practice.”

Yuuri tenses whenever Tyler says that and the tension builds up until it feels like his body is about to snap in half, which might be where Tyler is getting the stiff comment from, but still...

“Fuck him,” Pichit will mutter beside him. “Don’t listen to that asshole.”

Yuuri tries not to and just goes on dancing. It’s a very hard endeavour.

“Do you think you can do better, Tyler?” Their teacher sounds bored when she asks this one day, leaning against the wall and examining her nails.

“I just want Katsuki to practice enough so that he’ll actually look good.”

“Better than you?” their teacher challenges. Tyler flashes a mocking grin towards Yuuri. Yuuri tries his best not to glare at it.

“No one’s as hot as me on the pole,” he says. “But he can try for second, I guess.”

“Pole dancing isn’t just about who looks hot but it’s obvious you’re not going to shut up. Well then,” their teacher says. “There’s really only one way to settle this…”

Tyler challenged him to a pole dancing battle after one particularly gruelling class after he learned that Yuuri can perform ‘The Superman’. His eyes do this thing where they rake over Yuuri’s entire body, as if judging every single thing wrong with it, and it puts Yuuri on edge  enough that Pichit didn’t even need to goad Yuuri into agreeing. He did that himself.

Throughout his very long dance career, Yuuri has been in an astonishing number of dancer battles; he seems to be cursed to find himself in those types of situations. He never means to get himself into them, but somehow, he always does. Yuuri’s resigned to it at this point. It’s not a bad way of settling arguments, at any rate.

He agrees and hopes that it would be the end of it.

He wins by a large margin, according to their entire class and everyone from the advanced class. It was not the end of it.

“Do it again,” Tyler demands. “I don’t think he did ‘The Stag’ properly.”

Their teacher, who still seems incredibly amused by this one-sided rivalry that Tyler has come up in his head, casually mentions that there’s a pole dancing competition happening in Michigan in four months and Tyler had latched onto it, demanding a rematch.

Yuuri wasn’t really thinking much when he agreed in that moment.

Which is how Yuuri, stressed to the bone in the lead up for the World Championship, ends up submitting an application for the Midwest Elite Pole Dancing Competition. He almost forgets about it, too, after his disastrous World Ranking (10th! He finished 10th! Yuuri can barely look Celestino in the eye, let alone speak to his family who are all probably shaking their heads in regret and shame at Yuuri’s failure.) but then Tyler had come up to him and reminded him on their way to the rink.

“You’re going down, Katsuki,” he says. “And maybe I’d teach you a lesson afterwards.” He mispronounces Yuuri’s name again, but at this point Yuuri’s used to it. He’s not sure how someone can repeatedly mispronounce a name as simple as his but then, most Americans do and Yuuri can’t bring himself to care anymore. It takes him several seconds of blinking owlishly before he remembers.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he says before fleeing.

(He tells Celestino, partly in the hopes that Celestino will talk him out of this horrible decision.

The opposite happens. Celestino _encourages_ him with a cheerful reminder that Yuuri’s first ice show isn’t until late August and pole dancing is a good way to stay in shape and Yuuri seems to like it.

Yuuri is starting to wonder why everyone is all of a sudden betraying him.)

He has literally no excuse when he goes to his pole dancing teacher and Minako to help him with his music and choreography. Absolutely no excuse.

Well, he thinks as he furiously tries to figure out how to pole dance without looking like a moron, at least he’s going to prove an asshole wrong who can’t even pronounce his name correctly. It’s not much of a consolation, but it’s all Yuuri really has.

\--

(Despite their rivalry, Tyler still hasn’t grown out of his habit of following Yuuri around, only now he seems to have figured out Yuuri’s practice time for pole dancing, no matter how many times Yuuri tries to change it.

“Why do you keep following me?” Yuuri is tired. He doesn’t even know why he joined the stupid contest but he is pushing through with it and there are only so many things his nerves can handle in one sitting.

Tyler is leaning against a pillar, arms crossed over his chest.

“Maybe I just want to see you dance.”

Yuuri frowns. “You never have before.”

Tyler laughs. “Funny Katsuki. You’re hilarious.”

“I’m not joking,” Yuuri says.

“As if you don’t notice me watching you all the time”

Yuuri does notice that, but that’s mostly Tyler glaring at him so Yuuri pretends he doesn’t.

Tyler unfurls, taking several slow steps towards Yuuri until they’re only several inches apart. Yuuri’s mind has gone completely blank. A distant part of him wonders if this is how he’s going to die.

“Tell you what Katsuki,” Tyler says lowly. “I’ll watch you tomorrow and I’ll make sure you watch me.”

Yuuri gulps.

“May the best man win,” Tyler says and he walks away, hips swaying.

Yuuri stares at the spot he vacated, perplexed. He gets the feeling that Tyler just threatened him. Yuuri has no idea why Tyler considers _him_ of all people worthy of threatening.)

\--

Yuuri runs into Tyler on his way out of the dressing room before he’s about to go on.

Tyler’s eyes narrow when he sees Yuuri, eyes scanning Yuuri up and down. Yuuri tries not to feel self conscious despite the fact that he’s all but naked.

“I just finished,” he says. “Did you watch me?”

“No,” Yuuri says, eyes desperately seeking out Pichit. Pichit said he’d be backstage but Yuuri can’t seem to find him. Yuuri really does not want to be having this conversation right now. “I was in the dressing room.”

“Oh,” Tyler says. He sounds oddly disappointed. “I’ll be watching you. To make sure you don’t mess up.”

And Yuuri, in a fit of unexpected bravery (or madness. The more accurate term would be madness.) says, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure of that.”

And he shoves past Tyler before he could respond, face burning a bright red, because did he really just say that?

No. Yuuri’s not thinking about that now. He has a dance he needs to do and something to prove.

\--

“And now, Yuuri Katsuki from Detroit!”

Yuuri swallows, fighting the urge to throw up. Distantly, he thinks he hears Pichit cheering for him, but that could just be his imagination; he’s having trouble thinking right now. He focuses on not tripping on his way to the pole and making a huge embarrassment of himself. He is here to prove something and that’s always been a weirdly good motivator for Yuuri. He doesn’t need to focus on winning, just on bringing Tyler down, which is much more achievable.

He places a hand on the pole as a fast beat from the speakers play. He bends his body, wrapping a foot around the pole, and letting his weight carry him in a spin. Dancing is movement; arm position and raised feet and leaps and spins and steps, which, in the grand scheme of things, are things that aren’t that hard to learn with enough coffee and determination. But more than that, dance tells a story; a fight or a bird soaring through the air or a game of seduction. Yuuri’s not the best at seduction, he knows as much, but he doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t have to be Yuuri in this story, just a person who is better at seduction; the guy where everyone screams and is draws everyone’s eyes on him.

In this moment, he is the best stripper in the city, the most beloved. Men and women and everything in between scream his name as he wraps his body around the pole, muscles stretched taut and tight. His eyes are dark, hooded by the club’s lighting. He reaches out, wrapping it around the pole, legs slowly climbing, grinding, until his head is hanging upside down, looking down. Everyone is looking at him and that’s exactly how he likes it. They are hanging onto him, onto his every move, onto every flutter of an eyelid, the tilt of a head, and the wave of a hand.

(“Pole dancing isn’t stripping,” their teacher had drilled into their head from the very first minute. “That’s a fucking misconception, though you’re perfectly welcome to do that if it’s your thing, but don’t think for a second that that’s all that it is. You step into this class, you get it in your head that pole dancing is an _art._ ”

Yuuri knows this perfectly well but he’s here to prove a point and if he’s going to do this, he might as well give it all he has. And he is here to prove Tyler wrong.

How’s that for not connecting with the music?)

Tyler performed before him and Yuuri and Yuuri thinks that he catches a glimpse of him from the stands, or at least what looks like him. Or a blob that looks to be Tyler’s general height and build.

(Celestino has been reduced to outright begging Yuuri to at least try and get fitted for contacts but Yuuri is adamant not to.

“It’s not safe,” Celestino insists. “You need to at least see what you’re doing.”

The truth is, Yuuri skates better when he can pretend that the audience is just a screaming, incoherent mass of color. Less pressure and all that. To Celestino he offers, “At least I don’t get dizzy?”

Celestino had put his face in his hands and hadn’t spoken for a good five minutes.)

Yuuri very aggressively dances in that direction, if there was ever really a way to dance in a specific direction without changing the choreography. He narrows his eyes in concentration as he climbs up the pole, arms and legs wrapped around it in what he hopes is an enticing form. If he’s going to do this, he’s at least going to do it properly enough to blow Tyler’s mind away and make him regret ever saying one bad word about Yuuri’s dancing.

(He’s pole dancing out of spite. He is trying to _seduce_ someone out of spite. No doubt if Pichit could hear his thoughts right now, he’d probably be rolling on the floor laughing his heart away.)

The music comes to an abrupt halt and Yuuri is left breathing heavily, one legged wrapped around it, the other extended. There’s a smirk on Yuuri’s lips and he thinks that the crowds are actually cheering instead of booing, so maybe it didn’t go as bad as he’d thought?

He climbs down the pole, feeling a bit light-headed. He bows almost automatically before scuttling off to the backstage. Pichit is there waiting for him, a wide grin on his face. His face is flushed a deep scarlet, eyes twinkling as he envelops Yuuri in a hug.

“Was I good?” Yuuri asks hesitantly.  
  
‘Yuuri oh my god I’m pretty sure the audience was about to throw themselves at your feet and beg to have your children.” Yuuri flushes too. Pichit keeps his arms firmly wrapped around him. “You were _amazing._ ”

“Good,” Yuuri says. “That’s good.”

Someone clears his throat behind him. Yuuri reluctantly pulls away from Pichit’s grasp.

“Katsuki?” Tyler is standing in front of him, not quite meeting his eyes. His face is flushed too, hands moving around his body as if he doesn’t know what to do with them. “You were--You were great, earlier. Really great.”

Yuuri’s eyebrows shoot up. He had not been expecting that. He’d been expecting… Well, he doesn’t really know what he’d been expecting past he’s going to prove Tyler wrong. Now that he’s apparently accomplished that enough that Tyler is acknowledging that… he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

He nods stiffly, mouth unable to form words.

“Maybe you can leave him alone now,” Pichit suggests.

“What do you--”

“You’re nowhere near his level,” Pichit says and steers Yuuri away from Tyler. Behind them, Tyler makes an odd, screeching noise. Pichit gives a low whistle.

“Damn,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting that, but everything makes so much more sense now.”

“Expecting what?” Yuuri asks. “What makes sense?” He feels like Pichit and Tyler had an entire conversation in tongues.

Pichit merely laughs,  throwing an arm over Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Nothing important,” he says. “Now let’s go see how big the trophy they’re gonna give you is.”

“They’re not going to give me a trophy,” Yuuri protests. “Have you seen everyone else here? I was average, at best.”

“Ten bucks that they’re gonna give you gold.” It’s a stupid bet, so Yuuri being the person that he is, agrees.

A few hours later, Yuuri is holding a trophy bigger than a small child and Pichit is ten bucks richer.

Tyler never says a bad thing about Yuuri’s dancing ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> I know next to nothing about pole dancing. I did research (Yuuri is at a ridiculously high level) but if something is glaringly wrong, please feel free to point it out.
> 
> I'm at [tumblr](http://katsuki-nikifcrov.tumblr.com)! Please talk to me :)


End file.
